The Aerovel Flexrotor is the platform of choice in Newberg, Oregon-based Percision Integrated's bid to provide aerial wildfire monitoring services.

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Two Air National Guard reconnaissance planes were called in Wednesday by the National Interagency Fire Center to help detect and map wildfires in the Pacific Northwest. The twin engine, turboprop RC-26 aircraft will be temporarily based at Spokane's Fairchild Air Force Base and at Eugene's airport. In the near future, their assignment may be carried out by unmanned aircraft.

Drone makers in the Columbia River Gorge and digital mapping companies from Bend and Hood River, Oregon, are among those waiting to hear if they're hired to be an eye in the sky to monitor big wildfires.

Insitu senior manager of commercial aviation Charlton Evans said the eye in the sky could be a game-changer for fighting wildfires.

"We can not only do historical analysis on the fire, but also very frequent real time analysis on the fire, which is something that the fire industry does not get today,” Evans said. “And ultimately do predictive analysis on the fire so incident commanders can plan resources in advance of where they're going to need to be."

Department of the Interior acquisitions branch chief Joshua Carter in Boise said the agency is evaluating multiple offers. He projected a "mid-September timeframe" for making a bid award.

The federal bid solicitation envisions a drone that would loiter high over a wildfire for long durations—day and night—beaming down live video and thermal imaging.

FireWhat CEO Sam Lanier said the aerial data could be used in many ways including hot spot detection, real time targeting for water and retardant drops, future fire modeling based on land cover analysis and quick identification of property ownership in the path of a fast-moving fire.

"Currently, fire incident commanders must work with fire line information that often is 12-to-24 hours old - while a fire continues to burn," the bid partners wrote in a news release.

Digital mapping and analytics software developer Esri is also part of the FireWhat-Insitu partnership.

One of the capabilities of an aerial sensor developed by Overwatch Imaging is automatic hot spot detection, as highlighted in this image.

Credit Overwatch Imaging

Another Northwest company with a potential stake in the bid competition is Hood River, Oregon-based Overwatch Imaging. Founder Greg Davis said his small company has developed an aerial imaging sensor specific for wildland fire management, which he hoped would be incorporated by a winning drone operator.

Newberg, Oregon-based robotic aircraft operator Precision Integrated also acknowledged submitting an offer in response to the federal bid solicitation. It partnered with drone company Aerovel of White Salmon, Washington, which makes the Flexrotor unmanned aerial system, a vertical takeoff and landing reconnaissance drone.

The federal bid solicitation portrays the wildfire surveillance drone as a service that would be ordered as needed and billed by the day. The remotely-piloted aircraft would not be government owned.

Evans declined for competitive reasons to reveal the operating cost of the ScanEagle proposal, but said it would be "on par with other manned assets" such as a water bomber. That could mean hundreds of dollars per flight hour based on current firefighting air tanker contracts.

"We won't be in the way of the fire bombers at all," Evans said. "Our sensors are in their sweet spot around 3,000 to 5,000 feet for these applications."

Until now, when drones and wildfires appeared in the same story it was usually about how an unauthorized hobbyist trying to capture a cool picture endangered firefighting aircraft and forced aerial firefighting to stop temporarily. Drones would go from a hindrance to a help in the scenarios the federal government envisions.

The BC Wildfire Service has used unmanned aerial vehicles in an expanded role this summer as the Canadian province copes with a staggering fire outbreak. A fire information officer told CKNW Radio that the drones are primarily being used for mapping and hot spot detection and they are getting good reviews.

The Interior Department has conducted a few tests of unmanned aircraft technology in recent years, notably using a remotely-piloted, water-dropping helicopter in a trial near Boise, Idaho, and an Insitu ScanEagle over a remote wildfire in Olympic National Park in western Washington.

Other federal and state agencies could request the chosen UAV under existing interagency support partnerships.

"Ideally, we would like to award several contracts, so if needed, multiple locations may be supported at the same time," DOI wrote in response to a potential vendor's question earlier this summer.

Consumer drones look like child's play after you get a look at the unmanned, water-dropping helicopter that was pitched to the federal government Wednesday. The K-MAX chopper is the largest of several remotely-piloted firefighting aircraft to get a tryout this year.

Multiple times this summer, the sighting of a wayward hobbyist drone has grounded aerial firefighting aircraft at Western wildfires. But unmanned aircraft have the potential to be useful at wildfires too.

Both Oregon and Washington’s state forestry departments had hoped to try out drones this summer to provide reconnaissance at wildfire scenes. But neither firefighting agency managed to pull it off. Now both plan to try again next year.